City Employees: I stand with you

Running the city well means treating public employees well. The employees of the City of Minneapolis are the backbone that make Minneapolis work: every day, they work hard every day to keep people safe, housed, prosperous, and healthy — and all that often on limited resources and with little recognition.

Too often in the last decade, the public employees of the City of Minneapolis bore the brunt of harmful Republican policy: tax giveaways to people who don’t need them, savage cuts to core services that hurt people, and the recession from which it took us years to recover.

As Mayor for the last three-plus years, I’ve made a point of cleaning up after bad Republican policies in order to support public employees who are making Minneapolis great.

I have grown the City workforce after many years of cuts, to give our employees the tools they need to meet the 21st-century needs of our residents in the 21st-century, particularly when we are under attack by Trump.

I funded and signed the City’s first-ever paid parental leave policy for City employees.

I created and expanded innovative pathways for people of color to enter the City workforce, and supported aggressive new goals for hiring and retaining women and people of color as City employees.

I funded implicit-bias training for City employees.

I funded the insourcing of City jobs that had previously been outsourced.

I listened to our employees when they told us they were under-recognized and supported a first-ever citywide recognition program to honor them.

I have fought successfully at the Legislature to defend the resources that help our employees deliver for the people of Minneapolis.

I successfully opposed a forceful public effort to permanently exempt some interests from paying the property taxes that all other residents and business pay, which would harm public employees and the important work they do for all our residents.

I have stood firm against great political opposition for a responsible property-tax policy that supports the great work of our public employees and balances the needs of residents and homeowners.

And I have consistently defended public-employee unions.

I’m proud of the great work I’ve done for our public servants.

Public employees need and deserve a mayor with a backbone of steel and the courage to stand up for them, even — or especially — when it comes with a political cost. In the time of Trump, those qualities have never been more urgent: we only have to look at Wisconsin or Iowa to see what happens to states when Republicans dismantle public-employee unions.

If the Republicans are coming after public employees and their unions in the next four years, they’re going to have to come through me. That’s the Mayor I’ve been, and that’s the Mayor I will continue to be.